In my previous blog article, I referred to the increasing trend of AI replacing humans in various highly-skilled industries. Occupations which required years of training and sophisticated technical expertise are now being occupied by generative AI, replacing the human factor. One such occupation where AI is increasingly taking over is that of the fighter pilot.

The human Top Gun is steadily being replaced by drones and computer-controlled automated systems. It is not just me saying this; experts in the field are increasingly sounding the alarm bells about this development. It is true that senior US military officers are pushing back against AI-drone doomerism. Brigadier General Doug Wickert (US Air Force) has stated that AI pilots are still years away from realisation.

Be that as it may, let’s examine this issue of AI piloted drones replacing the fighter ace pilot.

Harrison Kass, a lawyer and Air Force pilot training school graduate, explores this topic in his article. Human air fighter pilots are prone to making human errors; drones and AI driven fighter planes do not require toilet breaks. An F-15E, an American fighter plane, costs millions to make – $65 million to be exact, according to Kass. Training a pilot for missions in such a plane costs 8 million dollars, and each hour of operation costs $30 000 for fuel and maintenance.

Surely it makes financial sense to entrust expensive equipment like that in a computer system, not in human hands? Drones and AI piloted aircraft sound like a financially viable alternative to human fighter pilots, but as Kass explains, no young person grows up idolising and wanting to be a drone operator; they grow up, like Kass himself did, dreaming of becoming a fighter pilot.

The gallant, courageous, morally upstanding fighter ace image predates the Top Gun movies by decades. Indeed, during World War One, the French and Germans put out cultural propaganda promoting the fighter pilot as the epitome of daring, dedication to nation, and glamorous fame. Dogfights with the Red Baron were portrayed in posters and associated Hollywood movies.

The United States, never a nation to lag behind in the promotion of war propaganda, developed its own narrative of heroic pilots. The late John Wayne portrayed a fighter pilot in a Cold War romance propaganda film in 1957. In the 1970s, Robert Redford reminded us of the post-WW1 American aviators and their derring-do exploits in The Great Waldo Pepper.

The fighter pilot became the archetypal hero; resilient in the face of difficulties, setting aside personal problems to serve their country, the fighter pilot embodied patriotic devotion to duty, no matter the circumstances.

It was, of course, the Top Gun movies that were the most successful in promoting the image of the heroic, clean cut military aviator. Well, the fighter pilot profession did need a makeover; after the Vietnam war, when Air Force pilots bombed villages, schools, hospitals, water treatment plants, napalming entire region, spreading chemical poisoning, the line between fighter pilot and war criminal was crossed.

The US Air Force dropped more tonnage of bombs onto the tiny nation of Laos during the 1970s than during all of its aerial operations against German-occupied Europe. This information tarnished the popular image of the fighter pilot as a sturdy, resolute defender of freedom. The admiration for military aviators was reduced as knowledge about their war crimes spread throughout the American population.

Kass wants us to admire and respect the skills, intelligence and courage of the human fighter pilots currently under threat of redundancy from AI systems. Drones cannot inspire future generations to join the air force.

I think I understand where he is coming from. I have a suggestion that makes sense given Kass’ frame of reference.

The original Top Gun aviators were African Americans. They should be widely promoted as examples of heroism, skill, and dedication to country – a nation which rejected them.

The original Top Gun military aviators in the United States were black. African American servicemen proved their superior air combat skills and intelligence in the very first aviation competition, organised by the US Air Force, in May 1949. The victory of the Tuskegee airmen was ignored by their white counterparts, forgotten by the lily-white officer class, and their trophy packed away.

In fact, let us rebuff the systematic effort by the Trump-MAGA cult, a network of financial fraudsters and child abusers masquerading as politicians, from abolishing black studies altogether. The MAGA cult has, under the banner of ‘fighting wokism’, overseen the dismantling of African American studies in universities across the United States.

One major consequence of this cultural war is the erasure of the contributions of African American military veterans. African Americans fought for the United States in World Wars One and Two; they returned to a country that rejected them, and subjected them to racial violence.

In December 1946, John T Walker, a black Navy veteran, returned home to California. Demobilised at the conclusion of World War Two, he had hoped to build a peaceful life. Instead, he found his home in flames. White attackers burned his house down. The arsonists left him a note, in which they clearly expressed their feelings:

We burned your house to let you know that your presence is not wanted among white people. You should know by now we mean business. Niggers who are veterans are making a mistake thinking they can live in white residential districts.

Walker’s experience was not exceptional.

Isaac Woodward, a black US army veteran, boarded a bus in South Carolina in February 1946. Brutally beaten by South Carolina police, he was blinded in the attack. Lynwood Shull, the police chief who led the assault, was taken to court. The all-white jury acquitted Shull of all charges in 28 minutes.

Decades later, and after Woodward himself passed away of natural causes in 1992, his case was revisited – his conviction overturned.

I have no opinion on whether or not AI should replace human fighter pilots. That is a decision for the US Air Force to make. I do know that AI has no ethics or values, but humans do. AI does not care about human life, or the environment. It has no concept of empathy or compassion, or concern for consequences.

Introducing AI will only reduce human accountability. If a warplane bombs the wrong target, or innocent civilians are killed, who is to blame, the AI or the commander directing it?

Let’s abandon the propagandistic Top Gun Tom Cruise stereotype, and honour the African American veterans, who loyally served and risked their lives in combat, but were denied recognition they richly deserved.

In Australia, as in the UK, there is large cliche industry called royal watching. Numerous stories about the lives and loves of various royal family members fill the newspaper pages and clog up the tv screens. The adventures of Harry and Meghan were a staple of this particular genre. Royal watching does not interest me in the least, let alone the sexual escapades of royals and vacuous celebrities.

However, for the purpose of the current article, I am willing to combine the two topics that while marginally interesting to me, take up untold hours of tv screen time; royal families and sex.

Most of us in the Anglophone communities have heard of Tutankhamun, the king from ancient Egypt, due to the 1922 discovery of his burial place. I get asked about him whenever I mention that my parents come from Egypt. The subject of Egyptomania still occupies the fascination of Anglophone audiences.

But here is something you do not know about him, a fact that opens a window into the lives of royal dynasties. Tutankhamun’s mother and father were also siblings – cousins to be sure. The good king was a child of a sibling sexual relationship. Inbreeding, also known as consanguineous marriages, was a common practice among royal families attempting to concentrate power in a closed circle of hands.

Many unresolved questions still remain regarding Tutankhamun’s lineage, but his ancestry is full of incest and intrigue. His was certainly not the first or last royal dynasty to practice consanguineous marriages.

We all know about Cleopatra, the Queen of Egypt from Macedonian Greek heritage. Richard Burton fell in love with her when he, (Marc Antony), went to Egypt and saw Elizabeth Taylor (Cleopatra). She was a member of the Ptolemaic Dynasty, descended from Ptolemy, one of Alexander the Great’s generals. Seizing power in Egypt in the immediate aftermath of Alexander’s death, Ptolemy founded his own ruling dynasty. His descendants, such as his son and successor Ptolemy II, married siblings.

Indeed, Ptolemy II married his sister, Arsinoe II. Indeed, King Ptolemy II was known as philadelpus, which in Greek means ‘sibling lover.’ Keeping power in the one family was a primary motivation for this inbreeding.

However, as we all realise today, consanguineous marriages come with a host of problems – mainly medical.

The Habsburgs, once a powerful German-Austrian royal dynasty whose power and influence extended across European kingdoms, consolidated their power by consanguineous intermarriage. It was also, ironically, a cause of their ultimate downfall.

The danger of consanguineous marriages is the increasing likelihood of harmful alleles, located on recessive genes, combining in the offspring, thus finding phenotypic expression. The now famous Habsburg jaw, the jutting lower jaw which doctors call mandibular prognathism, was the result of generations of inbreeding.

When siblings have children, the homozygosity of their children increases. Having a restricted gene pool, numerous hereditary conditions arise. The final Habsburg king, Charles II of Spain, not only had a lower jaw overbite, he also suffered from multiple chronic medical conditions.

Experiencing epilepsy, intestinal problems, and unable to have children he was nicknamed ‘the bewitched’ or the ‘cursed’ by his contemporaries. Dying at barely 38 years of age in 1700, he left no heirs.

His father, Philip IV, had married his niece. This, combined with centuries of inbreeding, only amplified the inbreeding coefficient, the likelihood that two identical genes, in particular recessive ones with deleterious alleles, will combine due to the closeness of their parents’ relation.

Royal dynasties, over the years, have practiced consanguineous marriages as a matter of power consolidation. This practice is no longer such a serious problem in Europe. Well, let’s be clear, the late Queen Elizabeth II married her third cousin. While not a direct sibling relationship, it still ranks as a marriage of consanguinity.

Sibling relationships are still a large and important factor, not among the European royal families, but among the Gulf petroleum monarchies. The Saudis, Kuwaitis, Emiratis, Bahrainis and similar royal families still carefully select marriage partners from siblings. Extended siblings to be sure, but the inbreeding coefficient is still there.

No, I am not suggesting that the Arab-Muslim Persian Gulf peoples are culturally regressive or backwards – by no means. I am highlighting the physiological problems arising from frequent consanguineous marriages, and the political and economic consequences that can result.

I have only written once before about Harry and Meghan, in all these years. I have no desire to follow the soap opera saga that their relationship with the British royal family has become. The only salient point here is how the Windsor-Mountbatten-Battenberg-Saxe-Coburg-Gotha royal family of Britain has treated, or mistreated, a woman of colour.

What did Meghan expect to happen by marrying into the royal inbred dynasty as an outsider, and person of biracial background? Royal dynasties intermarry not for reasons of pure romantic love (the heart wants what the heart wants) but for reasons of consolidating wealth into familial hands. Outsiders are not easily accepted, if ever, as equals.

There is one royal event which I have kept in mind all these years. My late father would explain to me in great detail about this particular event, which involved the enforced abdication, and end of, a royal dynasty.

This was the July 1952 revolution in Egypt, when nationalist minded army officers carried out a revolutionary overthrow, ousting the British-backed hereditary monarchy of King Farouk. The latter was the head of the Alawiyya family, an Arabised dynasty of Albanian origin. My father lived through those events, enthusiastically supporting the revolution, and emphasising its singular historical importance.

No, I am not suggesting that military officers take political power in a particular nation. However, that method of removing a royal family has retained its appeal to me to this very day.

Josef Mengele, the Nazi SS officer and doctor at Auschwitz, escaped justice in Europe by fleeing to South America. He conducted horrific medical experiments on concentration camp inmates, crimes which fell into the category of crimes against humanity. In 1945, he fled Europe amidst the ruins of the war.

He found refuge in South American nations.

First settling into a new life in Argentina after the war, he died in Brazil, with family and friends. His sanctuary was protected by a network of sympathisers. Living under a pseudonym, he nevertheless lived openly, set up businesses and bought farmland. He went canoeing with his grandchildren and the kids of family friends.

The Auschwitz doctor found, if not Nazis, then people who viewed his perspective sympathetically, among Germans in Brazil and Argentina. He lived for approximately 40 years after the end of WW2, dying of a stroke in 1979. While resident in Argentina and Brazil, he made overseas trips to West Germany. He could not have done so without authenticating his true identity.

What has all this got to do with Croatian expats?

Jasenovac, a concentration camp in Croatia during WW2, is the Auschwitz of the Balkans. Created and maintained by the Nazi satellite state of the Ustasha (Insurgent) movement, the atrocities committed by the Ustasha state have been systematically downplayed and minimised by Croatian expatriate communities in Australia, the United States, Britain and other countries.

No, not every expat Croatian is a Nazi. But the Jasenovac camp has been the target of a relentless campaign by the Croat expat community. To what end? To minimise the horror and cruelty of the genocidal crimes committed by the Croat ultranationalist Ustsha regime, thus rehabilitating its doctrines and the personnel who implemented them.

Let’s sort all of this out.

To be clear, no, the Germans in Brazil were not all Nazi fugitives. There is a long history of German immigration to Brazil. Thousands of Germans settled in that country from 1815 onwards, at the invitation of the Brazilian government. The latter nation, newly independent, offered German farmers land, seed and agricultural equipment for them to settle.

In the immediate aftermath of the Napoleonic wars, the German states were impoverished, land was devastated, and economic prospects were poor. Brazil provided a combined package – land and startup money for German farmers. Thousands took up this offer, and settled in Brazil over the years.

There was another motivation underlying the Brazilian government’s offer – to whiten the population. Germans being good white European stock were acceptable migrants. Let us also remember that German settlers, having taken up farming in Brazil, were also required to serve in the army. The Brazilian emperor, Don Pedro I, launched a series of frontier wars against the indigenous people. German soldiers participated in massacres of indigenous nations, and that is the bleak side of the German immigration success story.

It is wrong to portray Germans in Brazil as being composed of former Nazi fugitives. However, there were Mengele sympathisers ready and willing to provide sanctuary for the Auschwitz doctor.

While Auschwitz has come to symbolise a place of unspeakable racist-driven horrors and cruelties, the Croatian concentration camp Jasenovac has escaped such a culturally iconographic status – if such a positive description can be used for a place of inhumanity. The Independent State of Croatia (called Nezavisna Država Hrvatska in Croatian, NDH) lasted from 1941 to 1945, under German protection. Its leader, Ante Pavelic, modeled his movement the Ustasha on the Italian fascist government.

Identifying strongly with the Nazi regime, the NDH established the Jasenovac concentration camp on their own initiative, not at the request or instruction of the Nazi leadership. It was the only instance of a Nazi satellite state establishing its own concentration camp, in direct imitation of Nazi Germany.

Serbs, Jews, Roma, and antifascist Croatians were routinely massacred using gruesome methods. Jasenovac was the only camp that had a separate sub-camp for children. Prisoners were dispatched with sledgehammers, knives, and pregnant women had their uterus cut out. The NDH passed racial laws, copying the example of the 1935 Nuremberg racial exclusion laws in Germany.

Pavelic and his colleagues wanted to create an ethnically pure Croatia, cleansed of all non-Croat communities and cultures.

This particular camp has become the topic of intense controversy and debate, particularly among the expatriate Croatian population. Let’s accept the lower estimates of the number of victims killed in this camp – 100 000. Let us say for the moment, that the postwar Yugoslav Communist authorities exaggerated the numbers of those murdered at Jasenovac. Correcting an overinflated figure is one thing.

What is occurring however, is not just an academic exercise in correcting misinformation. The mainstream Croatian expatriate organisations have engaged in a systematic, persistent exercise in denial and Holocaust obfuscation, minimising and even denying that Jasenovac was a death camp.

By denying the racialised criminality of the NDH regime, they have helped to rehabilitate this so-called independent Croatia, obfuscating its ideological similarities and military ties with Nazi Germany. The far right inside Croatia today draw their strength from expatriate communities.

This rightwing revisionist rewriting of Jasenovac’s history is not confined to recent times. In 1991, Croatian president Franjo Tudjman, declared that the high point of Croatia’s long centuries of history, was the 1941-45 NDH regime. He conveniently omitted to mention that it was a blood-drenched murderous Nazi satellite state.

We deplore those German immigrants who gave sanctuary to the Angel of Death, the Auschwitz Doctor Josef Mengele. What can we say about those in the Croatian diaspora who insist on rehabilitating the Auschwitz of the Balkans? Jasenovac demonstrates that rather than revive the past glories of Croatian history, the 1941-45 NDH chapter forms one of the most shameful chapters in that nation’s history.